Switzerland Process “The Protocols of The Elders of Zion”, 1937 (b/w photo)

In autumn 1937, an appeal hearing is held in Bern against the Swiss editors of the so-called “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion”. The protocols were issued as secret documents of a Jewish world conspiracy. In fact, however, it is a compilation of several fictional texts. In 1933, the Bernese Isrealitische Kultusgemeinde and the Swiss Israelitische Gemeindebund SIG jointly filed a complaint against the publishers and in 1935 they reached a verdict of guilty in court against Theodor Fischer and Silvio Schnell. On the other hand, at the appeal hearing on 1 November 1937, the Bern Higher Court acquitted the two defendants Theodor Fischer and Silvio Schnell, who had been sentenced in the first instance, for formal legal reasons, because the term “trashy literature” of the Bern Act was not applicable to “political publications”.